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IBM, VMware Partner to Combine On-Prem VMware with IBM Cloud

IBM and VMware have partnered to help companies more easily extend their applications running on VMware’s software to the IBM Cloud, making it easier for enterprises to have hybrid environments consisting of on-premise infrastructure and public cloud.

At the IBM Interconnect cloud and mobile conference this week in Las Vegas, the companies announced an architecture and cloud offering they jointly designed that will enable VMware Software-Defined Data Center environments, consisting of VMware vSphere, NSX and Virtual SAN.

VMware SDDC is the company’s unified hybrid cloud that works across public, private, and managed clouds.

Under the partnership, IBM will use its “CloudBuilder” tools and workload automation capabilities to automatically provision pre-configured and custom workloads to the cloud that are validated by VMware’s SDDC architecture design patterns. Additionally, VMware has extended vRealize Automation and vCenter management tools to deploy and manage environments on the IBM Cloud, as if they are part of a customer’s local data center.

The two companies will also be jointly marketing and selling new offerings for hybrid cloud deployments, including workload migrations, disaster recovery, capacity expansion, and data center consolidation. Customers will be able to quickly provision new or scale existing workloads to the IBM Cloud. Through IBM’s international network of data centers, they also have the additional reach and scale to start locally and scale globally while also complying with data residency and other regulatory mandates.

“We are reaching a tipping point for cloud as the platform on which the vast majority of business will happen,” IBM Cloud senior vice president Robert LeBlanc said in a statement. “The strategic partnership between IBM and VMware will enable clients to easily embrace the cloud while preserving their existing investments and creating new business opportunities.”

VMware and IBM, however, are competing for hybrid cloud leadership against a host of other alliances such as Microsoft and Red Hat. When it comes to the hybrid cloud market, it seems that going alone isn’t always the best option.